Hi everybody, About two years ago, I wrote a backend for matplotlib on Mac OS X. This is a native backend for Mac OS X, meaning that most of it is implemented in C (Objective-C, to be precise) to fully make use of Apple's Quartz graphics-rendering technology. I have been using this backend for my own work for the past two years, and recently I updated it for use with matplotlib 0.98.3. To make this backend available to other matplotlib users, I submitted it as a patch to sourceforge (patch 2179017 on the matplotlib issue tracker):
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2179017&group_id=80706&atid=560722 I'd be interested in any feedback on this backend from matplotlib users and developers. Some information about this backend: 1) No 3rd party library is needed other than Python and NumPy. 2) The backend is interactive both with python and with ipython. 3) The backend was written in C for optimal performance, and depending on the application it can be much, much faster than existing backends. 4) One drawback compared to the existing cocoa-agg backend is that the latter allows easy integration of matplotlib into a larger cocoa application, whereas my backend only cares about matplotlib. Some history about this backend: I used to be one of the developers of pygist, a scientific visualization package for Python that was written about ten years ago and is still in use. About two years ago I switched to matplotlib (http://bonsai.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~mdehoon/software/python/gist). Whereas matplotlib has a vastly superior range of high-level plotting capabilities, pygist excelled at sheer speed. This was achieved by having three backends (Windows, Mac OS X, X11) written in C for optimal performance, which at the same time avoided the need for external 3rd party libraries for drawing. I believe that matplotlib can achieve the same speed and performance by similarly having a native backend. Enjoy! --Michiel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
